


A Word Away

by lamoamadeen



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Minor Akanishi Jin/Yamashita Tomohisa, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 16:00:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2315276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamoamadeen/pseuds/lamoamadeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Jin's mouth can't translate the things his heart says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Word Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kissed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissed/gifts).



> Dear Parkyoo, thank you for the great prompt, and here is your fic. :) I experimented a bit with its structure, so I really hope that the result will work for you.

Sometimes, Jin's mouth can't translate the things his heart says. When it happens, it throws a wrench into his songwriting, stalls a conversation with an awkward bout of silence, or earns him a place in the columns of gossip rags with a clumsy quote that, devoid of context and twisted just right, will make him sound weird at best and like a douchebag at worst. 

It hits him most often when he's nervous, his heart beating too fast for his mouth to catch on, the things he wants just a lungful away.

\---

"I like your sweater," he tells the girl he loves in sixth grade, because he can't work up the courage to say the other words. The sweater is such a bright yellow it's the first thing that comes to his mind, and she looks cute in it to boot. "You look like a little duckling in it."

Because ducklings are cute, too, and it makes him flush when he realizes he just more or less admitted to thinking so in front of the entire class. Her eyes widen, and Jin's breath catches as he waits for her answer.

Then he's looking after her as she runs away crying, and Tomomi-chan turns around in her seat to hiss at him that she hadn't taken him for a bully. 

He writes a song many years and a chain of botched relationships later, sings of getting further away the closer he gets, chased by a love confession he can never get right. He names the song after the color of the sunrise, and hopes that the optimism is warranted. 

When he's asked what the lyrics are about, he ends up fumbling the explanation, diving down after the words he knows are _there_ but rising back up with a bucket full of different ones, blinking into the camera as the red light fades, and the interviewer looks just as confused as Jin feels. The editor makes him look halfway coherent for the snippet they include on the DVD though, and Kame prods at him until he hunts down her number and thanks her in person, the words properly pre-selected.

\---

It never happens when he's with Pi, or with most of his other friends. He's on firm ground there, and when Pi meets him at a club or a park or a shopping mall with a grin and an "Oi, Jin, what's up?" they can go for hours, talk cars and Ryo's relationship troubles and Pi's fear of aging, trade insults like they're going out of stock tomorrow and then hug and bump chests and groan, "I missed you so bad, man!"

Once, when Jin is looking down at a pregnancy test as the door falls shut after Meisa, who's leaving him alone for his own private freak-out, he calls Pi and says, "I need you," just like that. And they are the right words, too, because Pi shows up forty-five minutes later, at half past three in the middle of the night, with a photo shoot scheduled early in the morning that he insists will require his face to be slathered in make-up anyway. 

"Sometimes I don't know what I'd do without you," Jin tells him in between hiccups after the third beer, and Pi wordlessly stretches his arm across the back of the couch and pulls him close, nudges Jin's head down to rest against his shoulder, and says, "Neither do I." He stays there with Jin, on the couch, until the first rays of the sun find their way through the window blinds.

\---

Kame never asks Jin why Pi stopped coming along on their dog walks late at night, when the parks are silent between miles of residential housing, when Kame, high-strung on nerves from another day of shooting, will loosen his gait and breathe.

But this is a different television show – this time, it's Pi there on the screen with Kame, and it's Jin watching two friends wear themselves thin. 

He's good at babbling, when it's not the words themselves that count but rather their relentless flow, up against the silence, so the first time they all reassemble in front of Kame's place, their wool caps low and their scarves pulled up high against more than the pre-dawn chill, he babbles away like a madman, gesturing wildly to make up for how hushed and low he needs to keep his voice in the deserted streets. The dogs are as unimpressed as they were last year, traipsing along tiredly with some half-hearted sniffs at the random lamppost, and while Kame and Pi start out just as sleep-deprived, they're so tense it's giving Jin second-hand muscle cramps.

But a few minutes of babbling in, Kame groans and rolls his eyes so hard there's nearly nothing but white for a second, and then the thin, stressed line of his mouth is curling up into a smile, and Pi bumps his fist against Jin's shoulder, drawling, "Will you shut up already, I think Kamenashi is about to cry from the brain overload."

"My brain can handle him just fine," Kame says, but he's languid and the smile still there; it stays even as Ran squats and he has to dig through his pockets for a poop bag. "And fuck you, too, by the way."

"Maybe tomorrow, Shuuji-kun."

Jin snorts. Pi grins. Kame flips him off over his shoulder and goes to pick up a pile of shit. 

They walk on, bickering, and Jin watches them unwind, his heart pumping lazily. When they circle back to Kame's place, he can feel the contentment seep even deeper into his bones as Kame stops and says, "I think we should go on a trip somewhere."

"America," Jin says, because that's just obvious.

Pi air-kicks his thigh. "Bakanishi!" 

"Guys," Kame says, exasperated, and _that_ round of eye-rolling goes to both of them. "I'm being serious, okay? We could do with a break."

"Huh," Pi says, and goes quite. 

The last time Jin suggested going on a trip, just for the fun of it, they were on a late-night stroll just like this one, in the middle of shooting _Gokusen_ , and Kame nearly bit his head off. Would have, too, if Pi hadn't gotten between them.

"Yeah. I mean... we could." Jin keeps his voice slow and careful, and his eyes on Kame, who ducks his head and murmurs, "I heard California's nice this time of the year."

Jin's heart thumps. "I don't know," he starts, and then Kame's looking up, his mouth opening in protest just as Jin says, "I mean. California's cool but... You're the one working his ass of right now. I'll go where you go." 

Kame seems stunned into silence, but his cheeks are flushing, and though Jin begins to feel a fidgety urge of awkwardness pressing up against his toes as the silence drags on, he wouldn't look away for the world.

"Alright," Pi says suddenly, too loud in the quiet. "Not that I don't like trips, and I'm glad we got Jin's America knee-jerking out of the way, but I'm beat. Let's figure it out next time?"

They agree, and Kame seems happy as he slips through the door, but as Jin and Pi head back to the cars, Pi is back to the tense mood they started out with. He doesn't join them on their late-night dog walks again, and when Jin thinks back to that last time, he can't shake the feeling that sometimes it doesn't matter how closely his mouth translates the beats of his own heart, because the rhythm one person dances to will give another migraines.

\---

There are no translation mishaps when Jin is speaking English, at least not the same way. English, once it snaps and connects in his brain, once he doesn't have to carefully lay out each sentence in his mind before opening his mouth, rolls across his tongue without the familiar strip of barbwire that sometimes digs down around his lungs when he speaks Japanese, too tight for him to find breath for the words that the people he cherishes stir up in his chest. Not with English, though, which makes him boisterous and carefree, babbling at anyone and everyone who wants to listen, and when he does have to search for words, it's because he doesn't know them yet, which is exciting rather than debilitating.

Jin's English-speaking self soars, plowing through mistake after mistake after mistake while the words stay just right, and whenever he does get into a pinch, he throws in a "fucking" for good measure and powers ahead.

"I don't know," Kame tells him over the phone at the rare chance they get to speak to each other, with Jin cramming vocabulary and breathing freedom in downtown L.A while Kame is whisked from one appointment to the next in preparation for KAT-TUN's upcoming tour. "You sound the same to me. Happier, maybe." There's a wistfulness to his voice that Jin never once heard before boarding his plane, and now it's there in every call, quiet resignation echoing all the way across the Pacific. And Jin wants it gone, wants the tired indulgence back that used to raise his hackles, by the end, and the throaty chuckle that meant he was getting it right.

Jin has googled pictures, late at night when he couldn't sleep, and in the pictures Kame looks no less harried than he did when Jin threw in the towel and ran. He doesn't remember a time when he didn't worry about Kame, and ever since he left, the worry is so wound up with guilt every photo hits him like a punch straight to the gut.

He tries not to google for pictures often. 

"Maybe you should come here, too," he says now, cautiously, and thinks that he could fit a bed into his study room if he moved one of the shelves into the hallway. "I think you could be... really happy here." 

He'd see Kame every day, away from the screaming and the microphones and managers and paparazzi, and he could show him the town and Hollywood Hills, teach him the English he has learned. 

There's a few seconds of silence, and then Kame sounds stiff when he says, "Well, we can't all just run off to America, can we?" and a few minutes later pretends he has to hang up. Or at least Jin _thinks_ he pretends to have to hang up. He can usually tell when Kame is lying to him, because Kame is a shitty actor when his audience consists of someone who counts. 

Jin has never hoped so badly for a lie to be exactly that.

 _I think I want back in_ , Jin writes him when a month has passed and all his calls have gone to voicemail. Kame writes back after ten minutes, a quick _Let me see what I can do_ bereft of a greeting or goodbye – ten days, and they're sitting across each other in New York, and Jin's too afraid to open his mouth for anything but "I'm sorry" before the agency representative marches in, rattling of the terms Jin needs to agree to. He'd sign away anything, and it doesn't matter that he left his official stamp in Tokyo, because not all parts of his body fail at holding onto the things he cherishes. 

He hurries through the final strokes of his name, feeling Kame's stare burn along the back of his hand.

He keeps his mouth just as shut in the bowels of the arena they‘ve chosen for him to make his comeback, hangs back after everyone as they take their spots on the moving platform. Just as the motor starts to hum, Kame grabs his shoulder, leans in and whispers, "You better not leave us again," and when he pulls back, his cheeks are so pink and his eyes shining so fiercely that Jin has to swallow against the dryness of his mouth, because that "us" is really a "me," and he's fighting to squeeze out the promise that's waiting to form on the tip on his tongue. But they're almost there now, the crowd roaring above them, so he just nods and takes Kame's hand instead, grips it tightly, pressing a _Never!_ into its palm.

\---

"Never" is what he promises Meisa, too, once Pi has left for work and he manages to not have his stomach clench in protest as he reminds himself, for what must be the thousandth time, that being a father is one of the few things he has always wanted life to give him, with a ferocity that made him blab in too many interviews as far as his former management was concerned.

He promises again right before they head into the municipal government office: Never to leave her, never to deceive her. Her stomach is still flat under his palm, and once they've signed their names, once Jin has painstakingly worked his way through each stroke, she beams up at him so widely he remembers why they became friends in the first place, why he ended up in her bed that night. He smiles back, silently vowing never to disappoint her, and a year later, repeats the vow to himself as they walk up the aisle between family and friends, his daughter watching from his mother's arms. 

Pi told him to do whatever he thought was right, that night in Jin's apartment. "I believe in you, you know," he said, and Jin squeezed his eyes shut, pushed his forehead more firmly against the hard curve of Pi's shoulder. There was a hand in his hair, hesitant, smoothing strands of it back behind his ears. "You'll make the right choice," Pi said quietly. "Whatever it is, I know you will." 

Jin thought so, too, a long time ago, but he can still hear Kame's voice like it was yesterday, abrupt and cold, _We can't just all go to America, can we?_

 _Congratulations_ , Kame's card now says, in English, even, but Jin can feel the bitterness seeping from every loop as he traces the letters with his thumb. "Who's that one from?" his wife asks, shuffling through her own stack of cards, half for the pregnancy, half for the marriage. "A colleague," Jin lies, because he's long since lost track of the words to describe what, exactly, Kame is to him.

\---

"I don't like the way he looks at you," Pi says, out of the blue, one night when they're sprawled around Pi's couch table, after filming for Pi's and Kame's drama has wrapped.

"The way who looks at me?" Jin asks, absent-minded, his eyes firm on the wad of paper money he is counting: he needs to figure out a new strategy until Kame is back from the bathroom, because Kame always wins at Monopoly, and Jin has a feeling today he can crush him.

"The way _Kame_ does."

Jin keeps counting for a second, then stills. "What?" he says, on a laugh that's verging on disbelief. "Dude, how much have you had to drink? I think we need to cut you off."

Pi shrugs, won't meet his eyes.

Jin's heart stumbles, just a bit, and he lowers the money. "I don't know what you mean," he says slowly, because he knows Pi, in and out, and this is Pi when he isn't joking. "What about Kame?"

Pi pinches the bridge of his nose, then waves his hand away from his face. "Na, forget about it, man, I was just thinking weird stuff, is all. There's nothing, of course, except he wants to steal all your hotels and drive you bankrupt." He taps the Monopoly board, grins in a way that's almost convincing. "Greedy little schemer, that one."

Everything's back to normal when Kame drops down next to Jin, their knees bumping under the table as the game goes into the final stage. Pi throws the money he owes at Jin's head like he does every time, pouts across the table just the same, and Kame goes on a capitalist victory frenzy, as always.

But Jin's been watching, quieter than usual, looking for whatever it was that seems to have Pi spooked and awkward. When Kame rushes back into Pi's living-room because he forgot his manbag, Jin leans back against the apartment door and tells Pi, "He looks at me no different than you do."

"Yeah," Pi says quietly, his face unreadable. "I guess he does."

His hug is as warm as always, though, and Jin decides to drop the matter on the way home, Kame dozing beside him like he always does, catching up on sleep until Jin drops him off at his place. His hand is firm and reassuring on Jin's shoulder, the clasp as brief as every time, and Jin can feel it for the rest of the drive, like he always does.

\---

Sometimes, Jin has no trouble at all with his heart-to-mouth-translation – sometimes, he has to bite down on the words so hard they etch their way through his tongue, burn away his gums. Because sometimes, the right words are, "You fucking douchebags," and, "Kiss my ass."

He grits his teeth instead, lowers his head, and says, "Understood," as the executives in front of him close the folder on his time in the boyband he's grown out of, but hadn't intended to shed.

An hour later, his mouth is a battlefield after the war, desolate and silent like a grave, but he still makes his phone connect the call, waits until Kame picks up with a cheerful "Hey, you on your way?" His panting is audible even over the dance number booming in the background, and Jin finds that all the words have withered away into corpses, and his heart feels just as dead. He hangs up, and smashes his phone against his kitchen table.

Jin once pressed a _Never_ into Kame's palm, and now he watches as Kame crashes headlong into a wall he never saw coming, that Jin let him run into because he couldn't muster the words. Kame looks hurt and hollow on Jin's television screen for the second time, again facing a crowd of reporters who salivate over the scandal and the opportunity to try and dig deeper.

When Jin looks into the mirror that night, his eyes no less dull than Kame's on TV, he wonders if he should stick to English for the rest of his life.

Then the doorbell rings, and he has to speak Japanese after all, because it's Pi, grim-faced, _furious_ Pi, who wants Jin to explain first and to call Kame second. And it seems that disappointing friends is the theme of the day, because while Jin manages just fine with the former, the words coming in halts and stops as his own earlier anger resurges, he can't do the latter, nothing left to say, a _nothing_ Pi can't change, however hard he's trying. So Jin shakes his head at the phone Pi is pushing into his hand, at Kame's face looking up at him from the entry already selected from Pi's contact list.

"Talk to him," Pi says before he leaves, and he just looks tired then, all the fury drained away. "I mean it, Jin. Don't do this to yourself."

"Thanks for coming," Jin manages, and leans into the hug, swallowing down dry nothingness.

A songwriter out of words. Who is he even kidding anymore.

\---

Sometimes, Jin forsakes words, and dances instead.

When Meisa says, "I want to try for another child," he tells her no and goes to dance the night away, his heart thrumming like a beast against its cage of barbwire ribs until Pi comes to drag him out of the club, loads him into his passenger seat, takes one good look at him and asks, right over the muffled throb of cotton Jin's eardrums have become, "Where to?"

And Jin can't help but clutch his phone more tightly, where the last message from a number occupying gigabytes of conversations is more than three years old.

"Fuck if I know," he lies, and lets Pi drive.

\---

Usually, whether Jin speaks up or keeps his mouth shut, his heart is blabbering up an ever-steady stream of noise as it thrums on tirelessly, furiously, happily, and Jin knows that, if he could and wanted to, there'll be a well of words that are waiting for him to plunge down into, to lift them up and squeeze them past his larynx, across his tongue, mold them into sound.

Yet sometimes, he is stunned into silence, his mouth losing its thread because his heart has skipped a beat.

\---

Three years before Meisa needs him to tell her yes, before he dives down for the no that's been lying curled up in his chest since the night Pi sat with him and watched him go to pieces over a plastic stick, Jin is dancing, too. Has been dancing for hours, actually, when he sees his phone buzz a few centimeters across the floor in front of the mirrored wall. He's thirsty anyway, so he's got his bottle unscrewed and its rim pressed against his mouth before the screen unlocks and the message pops up.

Somewhere behind him, Hoffman shouts, "More SNAP in the knees!" and then, a bit closer, and more quietly, "Dude, you planning on moving again sometime today?"

But Jin's heart has skipped a beat he didn't think he'd ever hear again, and everything is out of sync.

_So how's America?_

No greeting, no goodbye. Just one line, but it has Jin numb all over, and he holds up five fingers to his dancers as he leaves the dance studio.

Once the five-minute break has dragged on for half an hour, he writes back, _American_.

The reply doesn't come before Jin's gone to bed that night, and he only sees it the following morning, halfway through a diet pancake. 

_You must be happy then._

Jin never eats the second half of the pancake. His fingers hover over the screen instead, over the little contact icon that, if he presses it, will let him make a call, and he imagines it, just briefly, until he cuts the thought off because he doesn't want to throw up into the kitchen sink.

 _Are you?_ he asks back the next day, his fingers shaky but hitting SEND nevertheless, because unlike his mouth, they still know how to hold on to the things that count. 

_Chicken_ , Kame's email says, and it's punctuated with a single yellow duckling. 

Inside Jin's chest, the threads of barbwire stretch and coil, loosening their grip by a hair's breadth as he blinks down at the duckling that's trying to be an exclamation mark. His tongue still grates against the roof of his mouth, parched and aching, but his fingers are swift and firm. 

_You suck at zoology._

Five seconds, ten maybe, until his phone vibrates. _You suck at communication._

And Jin breathes, thinks of tiny ducklings, and types, _Touché._

\---

Jin has never been one to shy away from blunt language, just like he hasn't been one to fear New Year's resolutions. This year, however, the combination makes his stomach do dips and his heart go haywire, because 2012... 2012 is going to be _something_.

"I'm just saying," Ryo slurs, for another loop in the merry-go-round of the evening, "that sucking cock comes with a certain need for... expertise."

The others have fled for the time being, wise friends that they are. When Jin throws a helpless look towards the group two tables over, all it gets him is a raised eyebrow and a smirk that says "Your problem, dude," from Meisa, who stopped by earlier and accidentally got an earful of Round One of Ryo's Cock Epiphany.

She'd laughed, sweet and raunchy at the same time, and then she'd winked at Jin before swaying back onto the dance floor. 

"Hell of a woman," Josh had said, a bit wistfully.

Jin had silently agreed, and hoped that her next hookup wouldn't be someone in the midst of their own epiphany. 

"Cockspertise," Ryo now says, and giggles.

"Shut up."

"Just saying."

Jin groans. "Who gave you that cocktail again?"

"Some guy. Who didn't suck my cock. Alright. Maybe that was a pity. Everyone's doing that, I'm telling you. It's the hetero cock-sucking carousel, man, word's out all over. Like, because they got dicks, you know?"

"Ryo—"

"Aaaand," Ryo says, hushing Jin with a finger across his lips and partway up his nose. "And there's women, with pussies. So that's lots of.... intaking expertise, right? Sooo. So who knows The Dick best, man? We need to _know_!"

There's a cool glass pressed against Jin's cheek suddenly, and a Pi throwing himself onto the couch next to him. "Don't tell me he's still at it."

"But I'm not!" Ryo yells, and they both go hush at him. "I'm not," he fake-whispers. "None of us are _at it_."

"You slept with Kimiko like two months ago," Pi reminds him.

"See?" Ryo says, grabs Jin's coke out of his hands, and drains it before adding, "I'm telling you. No way to tell, not for us. Because we're getting old, guys, old. Missing out on the heterosexual cock carrousel, like, heterosexually, and that's all the rage on the scene now, right. So who sucks cock better is just a matter of—"

Pi pinches the bridge of his nose. "God, can you please shut him up."

"Already tried, didn't work," Jin says, and his fingers automatically twitch with the urge to message Kame about the whole thing, except he stopped messaging Kame one week ago, for _reasons_ , and even if he hadn't, his friend having a crisis about blowjobs is not really a topic that feels... appropriate to bring up right now.

Next year, however, is just around the corner, and next year, he will— 

Jin's cheeks flare with warmth. Then he takes a breath. Who says he can't get a headstart? "You know, now that I think about it...." 

Ryo rolls his eyes, his head thumping drunkenly against the headrest. "Think about _what_? We're talking COCK, dude, don't change the topic just 'cause you're a wuss—"

"I am talking about it," Jin says. Where his arm is pressed against Pi's, he can feel his friend go tense and still, so he fumbles ahead. "About cock, and all that."

Ryo blinks. Then his eyes drop down to Jin's mouth. "You mean... you blew a..."

" _I_ didn't." Jin's cheeks are burning. "Someone did, okay. And I'm telling you now. Because you're annoying as fuck. And you're my friend. So you should know." He sneaks a glance at Pi. "And it'll happen again, hopefully. I mean. Yeah."

"Wait. Just. Wait a second," Ryo says, slowly, and he's flicking his eyes from Jin to Pi and back to Jin now, his expression flabbergasted. "You're telling me... You're finally—? Like—"

"It was Kame, wasn't it," Pi says quietly, and Ryo finally snaps his mouth shut. 

Jin stares down at his thigh, trails a finger along the seam of his jeans. "Wasn't it always?" he murmurs, because it's difficult to stay oblivious once the blinds have been ripped away.

"I wouldn't know," Pi says, the smile a little pained along the edges, and goes to fetch champagne.

\---

Kame never called, not even after the yellow duckling. Jin had forgotten what his voice sounded like, unamplified, not smoothed out by a television microphone. They never met, either, and though Jin still _knew_ the way Kame ducks his head, purses his lips, or breaks into a full-body laughing fit, it had long since turned into a faded movie reel, rattling away in stops and starts and flickering grains as it played.

Kame had never called, but he filled up gigabytes on Jin's phone. One-and-a half years make for many messages, and Kame liked to send them by the dozen. 

One-and-a-half years, and Jin had never been as up-to-date about Kame's life as then, Jin's fingers hammering out mail after mail, the word count growing, the number of unwritten words steady at zero, his heart humming along to the slip and slide of his fingertips across the screen as they typed a friendship back into life.

They'd never talked, not once. That's the one thing they never wrote about.

\---

One week before Pi breaks out the champagne, it's beer he doesn't drink up before he has to leave early, and Jin is typing away on his phone, some random quip at Kame about his nutcase craving for Apple Daiquiri and the insanity of a ten-bars-in-ninety-minutes hunt for a drink that tastes like bubblegum. Especially because _this_ place is serving it, which Jin gleefully informed Kame of after the first two failed search attempts, and then refused to Kame tell where, because that would mean he'd have to cut his own beer short and leave, too.

That's the downside of not talking.

There's a shuffle to Jin's right as someone sits down on the bar stool next to him, wood grating against stone even over the live band playing in the corner, but Jin doesn't bother looking up, is too busy contemplating which of his emoji best conveys _you're totally nuts but I like you anyway_. Unlike Kame, he doesn't use the stuff like confetti—that's just selection laziness, regardless of how much Kame warbles on about emoji signifying the weight of his full attention.

Kame could probably talk up piles of shit if he tried. Jin's always been impressed by that. 

There's some throat-clearing from the man on the stool next to Jin, and then a glass filled to the brim with a chemically green ice-mash monstrosity clinks against Jin's beer.

"Cheers," the man says, warm like molasses, and Jin nearly topples off his chair, except there's a firm grip around his flailing arm, and the stool snaps back straight with a clang. The hand stays where it is. "Don't die on my account," Kame says, and that's a smile, slow and easy, and Jin sits and stares.

Kame's thumb trails a slow line along the soft crook of Jin's elbow. The smile turns into a chuckle, High Definition and Dolby Surround.

Jin's heart leaps but he can't stop looking, can't stop lingering over the angles of Kame's face, his jaw, the lips curling up with mirth. The way his shoulders shake along to the curve of his mouth, the fabric of his shirt stretching and shifting. The way his hair falls into his face when he cocks his head, the way the eyebrow begins to lift, like it always has, and Jin traces its shape down to the crook Kame's nose, more evident without lighting and make-up and Photoshop. 

_What the fuck_ , his brain says, but when he takes a deep breath to say so, the cologne hits him hard, makes him woozy. Jin hasn't smelled it in years.

"Cat got your tongue, hm?" Another brush of Kame's thumb pulses up Jin's arm, straight to his chest. 

The cat is probably long over the hill by now, chewing on taste buds and muscle.

Tongueless, Jin goes for, "Apple Daiquiris," but loses track when Kame licks his lips.

"Apple daiquiris," Kame agrees, sliding his hand down Jin's lower arm. "And I found them, too."

Jin swallows. Tears his eyes away from Kame's mouth, back to the green monstrosity.

Kame follows his gaze, nudges his glass along the counter. "Want to try? You can have it, if you want." Kame's other hand has arrived at Jin's wrist now, his thumb feathering along the edge of Jin's palm. "Because I'm thinking... I've been waiting so long, who knows if it'll own up to the craving, right?"

And Jin's pants go _tight_ , his fingers gripping the thumb, stopping it short. 

So he's missed some crucial beats. Doesn't mean he can't tell a crescendo when it's approaching.

This—is so much more dangerous than mistranslated words.

"How long?" he asks, his voice shot to rubble.

Kame shrugs slowly, counterpoint to Jin's racing heart, _I don't like the way he looks at you_ , Pi's voice in his head, from all the way back. "Long enough," Kame now says, a promise in his eyes, and this time, Jin looks right back.

He bites his lip and flexes his own thumb, flicks a _Yes_ across the back of Kame's hand.

Three breaths, ten steps until he's got a bathroom door digging into his back and Kame licking into his mouth, Jin's heart thundering along as Kame's hands leave burning trails along his jaw, down his back, to the front of his jeans, searing their shape into the fabric like branding irons, kneading and gripping until the thunder rises up Jin's throat and leaves it as a whine, high and urgent, and it makes Kame kiss him harder, fierce and fast before he's gone, dropping down onto his knees in front of Jin. 

And Jin's never—but holy... and he can't but watch, shivering all over.

Thirty seconds, and he's a moaning, twitching mess, his hands in Kame's hair—thirty glorious seconds, before it's over.

"What—" Jin splutters, gulping for air, and then Kame's back on his feet, leaning in, his breath fast against Jin's ear. 

"I don't do random fucks anymore," Kame says, and though his voice is barely a murmur, it sends Jin jolting back into the door. "Craving or not."

Jin thinks this is what it feels like when his heart implodes. "What?" he says, and finds no other words. All the blood has drained from his face.

Kame pulls back. But where his mouth should be pressed into a cruel line, it's smooth and relaxed, his lips still shiny and wet. Jin's waning hard-on twitches at the sight, despite everything, just as Kame says, "I'm coming out on my thirtieth birthday, and I won't have my partner be a bedroom secret." And then there's a hand cupping Jin's jaw, and he's caught between flinching away and leaning into it. "I've always wanted to be with you," Kame says, running his thumb along Jin's cheek with a pained smile. "But I've got plans now, and it's up to you if they'll include you." The hand falls away, down to the lock. Snaps it open. "So think about it, and call me when you know."

The door opens, pushing against Jin's back until he steps aside. When it falls shut, Kame is gone, and Jin is left with his pants hanging open and his cock dangling at a cold, confusing half-mast.

The Apple Daiquiri is still there, five minutes later, and Jin couldn't give less of a fuck about the dangers of unattended drinks right now. He downs it, tastes bubblegum apple flavor, and orders another. When he closes his eyes, all he can see is Kame, down on his knees. Kame, shrugging at "How long?"—Kame, throwing his weight into kisses like breathing was only an option.

Jin orders another Apple Daiquiri, and by the time it's gone, he's brave enough to count towards thirty. Five years. That's... a couple of albums, maybe. And then—

The bar stool next to him is pulled back, wood grating against stone like déjà vu, and Jin looks up with his heart high in his chest. "Another lonesome soul, huh," Meisa says, and flicks her head at the empty glass. "Mind if I join you?"

An hour ago, Jin was texting a friend he lost and somehow got back, content with daily messages and the random photo attachment. An hour ago, Jin never had a guy so much as touch his dick. Now he's thinking careers and long-term relationships, and there's dried saliva on his dick.

"Sure," he says, and forces a smile, a good one, even, because Meisa is nice and funny and has a sweet laugh. Jin doesn't know what to think, so he might as well not. "Feel free to."

\---

Ryo has a cock-sucking crisis.

Pi orders champagne, and leaves early.

Jin toasts the New Year at his parents' place, and knows it's only a matter of weeks until he'll make the call. He's sappy all night, and his brother teases him relentlessly.

Meisa says, "It's up to you, but I'm having it anyway. I think we could be good together. Just... call me when you've made up your mind." She doesn't smile, doesn't laugh, it's not a joke. The piece of plastic is still sitting on Jin's living-room table when she leaves, still there when Pi arrives, takes one look at it, and curses.

"You'll make the right choice," Pi says three beers later, his hand hesitant as it tangles with Jin's hair, "whatever it is, I know you will." And Jin has missed crucial beats before, and if he wasn't so afraid of the morning, he'd stop and think about these ones. But he doesn't, just hides his face against Pi's shoulder instead, and he doesn't call the number he wants to call in the end, either.

Five years is short, in terms of albums. Jin ends up with none, and Kame sends a card that says _Congratulations_ in English handwriting. Jin traces the loops of the letters. His heart doesn't stop and die when he lies, "A colleague," didn't stop and die when he promised "Never" for the second time, because Jin is getting good at saying the right things after all, if _right_ means _what people want to hear_.

His daughter beams at him.

His phone holds gigabytes worth of old conservations he never reads.

\---

It's a lovely Saturday, just the right weather, Jin thinking about lunch and laundry and the sandcastle he promised he'd build when he turns a corner and suddenly the paparazzi are right up in his face, crowding the street outside the little shop of Jin's favorite vegetable vendor, Jin loaded with two bags full of pumpkins and a three-year old girl trying to hide against the hollow of his throat so desperately he's gasping for air.

They never used to shout at him, back when he was still with the agency.

"AKANISHI-SAN, WERE YOU AWARE—"

"OVER HERE, OVER HERE—"

"AKANISHI-SAN, IS THAT YOUR DAUGHTER?"

"DID KAMENASHI-SAN EVER TELL—"

"WAS THERE ANY INTIMATE CONTACT BETWEEN—"

"DID YOU KNOW KAMENASHI-SAN'S EX-PARTNER BEFORE HE—"

"DID THE TWO OF YOU FUCK?"

That last one shakes Jin out of his stupor. He squints against the flashing lights, the yelling, the pounding of his own heart. His daughter starts to cry. There's a touch against his elbow from behind, soft and hesitant, and when he turns around, it's Konoe-san, the vendor, who's gesturing for the bags, and then Jin's got his hands free, can adjust the weight on his hip, rest her more firmly against his chest, lay a hand over her back. He turns his head down to hers, whispers, "It's okay, it's okay. They can't do anything to us. We'll be gone in a minute. You can put your hands over your ears if you want to."

Konoe-san comes back again, waves him back towards the store, where she's rolled down the shutters and only left the door open. Jin is right on her heels, cringing at putting his back towards the mob, but then a last question stops him in his tracks.

"DID YOU LEAVE KAT-TUN BECAUSE OF KAMENASHI-SAN'S FETISH?"

Jin grits his teeth and turns, and that's the same guy right there, smug and smarmy, the one who asked if they'd fucked, and even in the bustle of everyone trying to outsnap everyone else with photos, the others are keeping an arm's width of distance from him.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jin says grimly, though he can take a guess. "But Kamenashi-san—"

"Got outed by the guy he was banging," Smug and Smarmy says, a lewd grin on his face. "And you just became the first one not to say No Comment."

"Kamenashi-san is an old friend I hold very dear," Jin says, clutching his daughter tightly as the crowd sways closer, "so I'd appreciate it if you shoved your homophobia where the sun doesn't shine and showed him some respect." The street is quiet now. Jin takes a step back, towards the door Konoe-san is holding open. "This is the twenty-first century, and I'm fucking fed up with this fetish-shit because I don't see where the problem is when a dude loves a dude. So thank you, and have a nice day."

The door slams shut as the street erupts into a furor, people calling their agencies, probably, with Akanishi's latest scandal, and Jin just breathes for a second, running his hand up and down his daughter's back, coaxes her hands away from her ears and tells her that everything's alright until she's calmed down enough to let him breathe, let him put her down.

Konoe-san cuts bunnies out of apples, then, and shows her how to stamp carrots into flower shapes.

Jin makes calls. One to Meisa, to arrange for pick-up, and one to Pi. "They're still outside," Jin tells him, his hands shaky when he runs them through his hair. "I don't want them to jump us again when we leave, it's freaked her out too much already."

"Yeah," Pi says, and he sounds harried, voices snapping in the background. "Let me see what I can do. Agency‘s going nuts, but nobody wants to touch this one with a ten-foot-pole. No precedent, too risky."

And it is. But when Jin leaves, there's nobody on the streets, and back at home, the news stations keep alternating between pictures of a white-faced Jin with a word-by-word quote, loops of Kame dancing, singing, acting, some more loops of Jin and Kame dancing, singing, and acting together, and the announcement that Yamashita Tomohisa will be available for comment in ten minutes.

 _THANK YOU_ , Jin writes. _Don't know what I'd do without you_.

He doesn't write to Kame. Just keeps watching the news, as Pi comes on, suited up and with a serious look on his face, weighing each word and clearly coached on what to say, but there's "tolerance" and "progress" and "my friend" among the words, all the while a band of text keeps rolling on the bottom of the screen, stating that Kamenashi-san has not made any appearance yet.

Kame is twenty-nine years old. One year later, and it would have been old news. Not worth the money now sitting on some asshole's bank account, Jin thinks, and balls his fist.

"Quick hook-ups," Meisa says over dinner, halfway through her salad. "Those never end well for people like us." She's subdued, has been since earlier when they watched TV together—she knows Kame, too, though it's been ages now, for her.

Jin lays his chopsticks down; he's not feeling like eating anyway. "It wasn't a hook-up. He had a plan."

"How do you know that?" Meisa is frowning, but keeps on eating, one tomato, one leaf after another. "I thought the two of you haven't had any contact in years."

Jin bites his lip, but his heart is still hissing and spitting from earlier, when Smug and Smarmy was smirking up at him, and it's pushing so hard he can't keep the words back. "I haven't. He told me the night you and me hit it off."

The chopsticks holding the last leaf freeze in the air. Then his daughter starts crying, and Jin hurries off with a quick apology.

Later that night, when there's still been no sign of Kame on their TV and they've gone to bed, Meisa says, "I want to try for another child."

And Jin _knows_ what to say, loves being a father, too, but his head's full of Kame, four years back, telling him to call when he'd made up his mind. Writing _Congratulations_ , and finding some guy who'd said yes to his plan and then gone and fucked him over anyway.

There's a _no_ curled up inside his heart, where it used to boil, then simmer, then glow as the years went by. He takes a breath, and lets it rise.

\---

"Where to?" Pi asks five hours later, the car pulling away from the curb, leaving the backdoor of the club behind. _What do you need_ , Jin hears, and grips his phone tight, where there's one-and-a-half-years worth of conversations with a guy who had a plan but didn't get it, wanted someone but didn't get him, either, and now what are they even left with?

"Fuck if I know," he says, and lets Pi drive.

They make their way through streets that are still quiet in the early dawn, the sky preparing for another day of news and scandals and children being conceived by parents who just wanted to drown their own thoughts for a night. 

Pi cuts the engine in a park Jin finds oddly familiar but can't quite place. They're silent, for a while, and Jin lets Pi's breathing slow down his own. His eardrums are still recovering from hours spent under blaring speakers.

The words, when they finally come, are quiet and soft in the dim interior of the car, but Jin knows a crescendo when it's approaching, so he still hears it loud and clear when Pi says, "I love you."

Jin squeezes his eyes shut. There's a hand on the back of his, the touch light and unintrusive. 

"I always have."

"I know," Jin says, his throat going tight. 

"I don't want you to feel obliged or anything," Pi says. "I just wanted to say it the once, before you run off to—"

And Jin's out of his seat, half in Pi's lap, presses a kiss against his mouth that isn't even that hard but hurts all the way down to his toes, pushes closer, desperately, grinds his lap down and wants to sob, makes Pi gasp, his hands coming up against Jin's back, and Jin is inside, his tongue sliding against Pi's, a growing hardness under his ass, and Jin's heart is writhing, roaring, and he just wants it to Shut The Fuck Up Already, to just make it stop and—

Pi shoves him off. Jin tumbles back onto the passenger seat, knocks his elbow against the dashboard, his knee against the gear shift.

They're both breathing hard. Jin tries to find something to look at, something not Pi, and decides on a set of swings down the end of the park, next to a massive willow. Realizes with a jolt that it's one of the parks they used to walk in to get rid of drama-shooting stress—himself, Kame, and Pi.

"I still love you, you _dick_ ," Pi says, startling Jin out of his stupor. "But if you pull that shit on me again we're over."

And Jin crumbles, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, his breathing speeding up again, like it did when he closed the door of his house behind him, and walked away from his family. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, man, I—"

"Shut up, Jin." Pi's voice is hoarse, but the hand is back, coming down lightly between Jin's shoulder blades, and though Jin can feel it shake, he still focuses on the warmth that seeps through his shirt. "Just shut up, alright."

They sit like that until it gets lighter outside, Pi's hand running slow circles across Jin's back until the wheezing stops and Jin's eyes are dry again.

Into the quiet, Jin murmurs, "I love you, too, you know," and they both know there's a _not like that though_ he's sparing them. "I just don't know how I deserve you, after all the... the stuff."

"You do," Pi says, and starts the engine before he adds, "Even though you're the biggest idiot I know, and that's saying something 'cause I know plenty."

"You know Tegoshi," Jin says, by force of habit.

"Exactly."

Jin grimaces. "I deserved that one, too, didn't I."

"Absolutely." 

Jin exhales, and bends to pick up his phone from the footwell, where it must have fallen when—earlier. The screen still lights up when he pushes the standby button. 

Pi clears his throat. "So," he says, and shifts into first gear. "Where to, princess dear?"

Jin tells him to fuck off. Then, an address. Pi doesn't look surprised.

\---

Kame picks up on the eleventh ring. Jin didn't think he would. He also thought there'd be a crowd of paparazzi stalking all exits of the apartment block Kame lives in, but a quick Google Search eases his suspicion at finding the garage unmonitored; there's been a sighting in Shinjuku, supposedly, and some of the hyena's must have split off from the pack. The guard down in the garage takes a step towards him but then stops in his tracks, recognition written all over his face, and waves him through, which must be the upside of having a twenty-second blurb of one's picture and concert clips broadcasted on every news show for the past twelve hours.

"Yeah?" Kame says now, no name, his voice flat.

Jin opens his mouth. Comes up with nothing. Thinks of the time he went to America, and panics.

"Hello?" Anger now, and fear, maybe. Jin doesn't know why the phone was even switched on; Kame must be blocking calls left and right, holed up in there with his plans in shards.

Deep inside, something gives. Jin clears his throat, and says, "It's Jin."

Silence, now on the other end. 

"Akanishi," Jin adds hesitantly.

There's an audible breath, sharp in Jin's ear. "You think I know many other Jins who've—"

"I'm sorry," Jin says, for the second time today, letting his hand come to rest on Kame's door. "I'm sorry he did that to you. I always hoped... hoped that you'd get things the way you wanted to. Have your long-term guy, the thirtieth birthday, all of it."

"How nice of you."

Jin closes his eyes, lets his hand fall away. "This is a bad idea, isn't it?" 

"I don't know, _Jin_ ," Kame says, and you could cut the door in half with that voice. "I don't know, considering it was _you_ who could have made all of that happen, but then didn't even have the guts to call me to say you'd found someone else. So, how very nice of you to call, today of all days, to catch up with me, and yes, it _is_ a bad idea."

Jin's heart stutters. He knew this would happen, at least figured so, but... 

Kame coughs and goes quiet, then sounds hollow when he says, "I'm over it, usually. Today's just a bad day."

"Yeah. I know."

More silence, and then Kame says, "I saw you on TV yesterday".

Jin winces, wishing he'd found a smoother way to talk down Smug and Smarmy. 

"Thank you for sticking up for me," Kame says roughly. "You didn't have to do it, I appreciated that. And sorry about your daughter." Cloth rustling, then more softly, "How is she, anyway, did she sleep alright after all of that?"

"I don't know," Jin says, closing his eyes. "I'm not at home. Haven't been since yesterday night."

"What?" The sharpness is back, and Jin can imagine him sitting up straight, his spine snapping into the taught line that used to appear when some freakish radar in Kame's brain went _Potential Trouble Located_. "Where are you right now?"

Jin bites his lip. "Standing on your doormat?"

A curse, and the line goes dead. Seconds, and then the door is ripped open, and Kame's eyes widen. "Not a joke, then," he says, and stares, from underneath tired strands of hair that can't have seen an ounce of water or product today. There's stubble on his jaw, and the skin under his eyes is tinged violet. 

Jin shakes his head, makes himself look smaller. "Like I said, bad idea. I'll be going."

"Home?" Kame asks, his eyes narrowed, his spine straight like Jin knew it would be. 

"No. Not... Not home. Not anymore." Jin swallows. "I had to leave."

"What, she threw you out?"

Jin ducks his head, clenches his jaw, reminds himself _he'_ s the asshole here, not Kame, who has every right to be angry. "No, I—it was me who went. She wants another kid."

"So?" Kame leans onto the door handle. "Excuse me if I point this out, but you were so quick to make the first one, I would've thought you'd jump at the chance for another."

The corridor's still empty; there's only another four doors on this level, but Jin doesn't want to be caught out here, Kamenashi slicing away at him until there's nothing left. He wants to be inside or gone. So he takes a breath. "I got drunk, alright. After you left. All that stuff... it messed me up a bit. Meisa appeared, and we... well—" he makes a helpless wave. "It wasn't supposed to mean a damn thing."

Kame's mouth goes slack, his knuckles turning white where they grip the doorframe.

Jin's blood goes cold. Had Kame really never considered—had he honestly thought that—but the way he's still frozen in his doorway is answer enough.

"I wanted to call you," Jin pleads, and fuck it if he sounds like he just watched _Armageddon_. "Told some of my friends, made a New Year's resolution. Figured, five years, I could do that, right? One album every year, save up money. I would've—I could've done that. But she was _pregnant_."

He thinks of his daughter, and being a father. About the one thing he doesn't regret, to come out of the whole fuck-up.

"But why not call?" Kame asks, and the sharpness is gone, replaced with something much more breakable. "Why not... I thought you'd..."

"I'm sorry," Jin manages. "I just... couldn't. Like. I just didn't think there was anything left to say?" His voice hitches, so he snaps his mouth shut. Keeps standing on Kame's doormat, and it's all so pathetic he doesn't know if he should cry or laugh.

Kame looks at him as the seconds tick by, each of them agonizing. Then he slowly steps back, opens the door a little wider. "There always is. And I'm willing to listen."

And Jin's heart, like the dumb hummingbird it is, starts to pulse against the walls of his chest, testing the barbwire that's rusted into his ribs. It makes Jin hesitate. "I suck at talking," he says. "Especially with you. It's like... sometimes my heart just can't translate the stuff inside. And then I mess up."

Kame shrugs. "I texted you every day for almost two years because I knew you'd chicken out on me if I'd call." He's still holding the door open wide. "I also know you suck most when it comes to people you care about, so I guess that's a start."

Down the corridor, a lock turns. Jin takes a hurried step inside, and the door falls shut. "I'm sorry," he says again.

Kame waves it away, says, "We've been over that," and walks inside. 

Jin feels shy all of a sudden, and once he's stepped out of his shoes, he follows Kame cautiously. The hallway opens into a living-room he's never been to, and Kame sits down on a couch that's bigger than any Jin has ever owned. The room is tidy, immaculate even, the glass of the couch table gleaming. 

Kame was always at his most OCD when the stress was at its peak.

"Have a seat." Kame points towards the opposite end of the couch, so Jin sits down, with his hands folded in his lap, and nothing but his butt touching the couch.

Kame huffs. "It won't bite, you know. And I won't either, so stop looking at me like I'll wring your neck if you'll say the wrong word."

Jin slowly leans back, lets the cushion mold itself against his back. Kame is watching him, calm now, and so familiar Jin can't help but breathe, slowly, in and out. "I'll do my best."

"See. That's a good start." The edge of Kame's mouth curls up, just the tiniest bit. 

"What do you want me to say?" Jin asks, because there's so many ways this could go, so many words he could use, and nothing but white canvas ahead. 

"What feels right," Kame tells him. 

The barbwire in Jin's chest creaks, the spikes catching on his ribs as they detach, one by one. 

Kame shifts, leans toward him ever so slightly. "I can wait the whole day, if that's what you need. I can't promise that it'll change things. But whatever it is, I'll listen."

The barbwire crumbles to dust. 

Jin folds his hands in his lap. Takes a breath that goes down deep.

Outside Kame's window, the sky flares purple as the sun begins to rise.

\---

Sometimes, Jin's heart can't translate the things his heart says.

It hits him when he watches a movie that just won't let up with the angst and the heartbreak before it finds and swerves through the mousehole toward happiness. It hits him when his daughter shrieks with laughter as he pushes the swing, "Higher, daddy, higher!" and he can't but indulge her, even when it means he'll have to take over the phone tonight for a minute longer during her goodnight call to Meisa, put things into perspective after their daughter has rambled on about nearly managing to get the swing to do a looping. It hits him when Pi shows up with stars in his eyes, because there's a someone and Pi's in love, which translates into hugs for Jin, and those always hit him hard. 

It sometimes feels like it'll him as it used to, when he's sitting through an interview, or on the couch of a celebrity talk show, and they ask their questions, hoping to get another soundbite they can use for the political talk shows later on, because Jin's comments on certain issues are mind-numbingly popular these days, and there's people out there depending on him to get the words just right. It feels like it'll hit him then, the phantom sting of barbwire rising in his chest, but before new coils can grow and wrap around his ribs, Kame will smile next to him and take the reins, because this is his stage and he knows how to work it, knows how to talk up anything to anyone, and Jin doesn't think he'll ever not be in awe, of the flow of Kame's words, the ease of his inflections, and the fact that Jin is the one to sit beside him.

Sometimes, and on those days most often, Kame will take him home early, will pull him down onto their bed, into his arms, and hush him with a kiss. And that, when they're as close as they can get, each gasp a wordless promise drawn from the same air, that is when it hits Jin hardest of all.

Because sometimes, Jin's heart just feels, and there's no need for translation.

__And when there is, when they're curled up after, and Kame puts a hand on his chest and says, "I heard California's nice this time of the year," Jin lets the noise in his heart bubble over, lets his mouth spill it all._ _

__Every word feels right._ _


End file.
